The Tale of Putin and the Pike.

(Russian cultural references).

Fisherman and the Golden Fish.
Illustration by Ivan Bilibin.

President Putin's most recent outdoor exploit in Southern Siberia when he caught a 20 kilogamm pike caused disbelief and widely circulated jokes.

Putin, accompanied by the Prime-Minister Medvedev and the Minister of Defence Shoigu, was fishing on a lake in Tuva, a Russian Federation republic on the border with Mongolia. In one of the photos with his pike, Putin seems to be talking to the fish or kissing her.

Some claimed that the pike in photos shouldn't have been more than 12 kg. The Kremlin insisted that the weighing was genuine. The long-standing British record for a pike is 21 kg 234 g.

Others simply rolled their eyes — no, not another one! Putin previously flew on a micro-light with a flock of  storks, chased whales on a speedboat, shot a Siberian tiger with a tranquiliser, and, most hilariously, 'discovered' a cache of Greek amphoras while diving in the Black Sea.

The pike episode is special in that it evokes numerous cultural references in Russia. All of them derisive.

One is the popular folk tale of The Simpleton Yemelya and the Pike (a version in English here and in Russian here). Yemelya, the lazy third son of a peasant, refuses to do any work at home or in the fields except when bribed by 'presents'. One Winter, he goes to fetch some water in an ice-hole on the river and catches a pike in his bucket there. The pike, being a magical creature, asks him to let her (or him in some versions) go, and promises that any of Yemelya's wish will be fulfilled if he adds to it a short incantation: "по щучьему велению, по моему хотению" — 'on the pike's behest and on my request.' Yemelya goes on to marry the tsar's daughter and later on becomes the tsar himself.

The 'moral' of the tale seems strange or absent at first, but only if you forget that many folk tales have a reverse message, that is they tell you what not to do or not to expect to happen. In Russian language, the phrase 'on pike's behest' is often used to mock wishful thinking or empty boastfulness.

The second reference is to Pushkin's tale in verse "Сказка о рыбаке и рыбке" (The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish, Robert Chandler's version in English here and in Russian here, wiki about the tale). The tale uses the plot of the Brothers Grimm Vom Fischer und seiner Frau (in Russian here) but while many of the Grimms' tales are well-known in Russia this one is better known  in Pushkin's rendition.

The old fisherman lives in a mud hut by the sea with his wife whose only possession is a разбитое корыто (broken trough). One day her goes to the sea and catches a goldfish who talks to him in human language and, again, as in the tale about Yemelya, asks him to let her go. The old man, charmed by the beauty and gentleness of the sea creature, lets her go. But the fish-wife scolds him and makes him go back to the sea to ask the goldfish for a log cabin. The fish, who turns out to be the Queen of the Sea, turns the mud hut into a log cabin. The fish-wife wants more and more with all her demands granted. Until one day when she is deciding that she wants to rule the Sea herself. After which the Goldfish has had enough and everything returns to where it was, the mud hut and the broken trough.

Остаться у разбитого корыта — to be left by the broken trough became an idiom which means to be no better off than before, to be left with nothing, or to be back where one started.

And the third reference is "Бриллиантовая рука" (The Diamond Arm, wiki here), Leonid Gaidai's 1969 comedy. If it isn't a number one then it certainly is in the top ten of the most loved Russian/Soviet films. Every Russian-speaking person knows it practically by heart and almost every line went into the language as an idiom.

The plot turns around a gang of smugglers whose latest shipment of gold and diamonds from abroad has, by accident, landed in the cast on the supposedly broken arm of an unintended man, Semyon Semyonovich (played by the famous comedian Yuri Nikulin). Nikulin reports the incident to the police, and they decide to use him as live bait to catch the criminals.  The crooks, one of whom befriends Nikulin, didn't realise that Nikulin saw the treasure being hidden inside the cast, and go on trying, unsuccessfully,  to lure him into a series of traps to get the cast off him. Now, in one such attempt, Nikulin and his 'friend' go on a fishing trip to a remote place. Nikulin, an experienced angler, doesn't believe there's fish there, but is promised that "клёв будет такой, что ты забудешь всё на свете" (the fish will be biting so much that уou'll forget everything). Because another, scuba diving crook, is sitting at the bottom of the sea with a netful of live fish and hooking them on as soon as Nikulin throws in the line.

The staged fishing success that makes the fisherman 'forget everything in the world' is being remembered now and repeated in connection with Putin's pike, genuine or not.

There's the triple counter-punch for you, fire the PR.

The Diamond Arm with English subtitles. The fishing episode comes at 44th minute into the film.



In this 1957 Soviet cartoon version of Yemelya and the Pike there is an added motive of Yemelya beating the foreign princes, defeating an invading army and the tsar deciding to emigrate abroad. (bad syncing)


  

Through Chekhov's Eyes. Grossman's Season on BBC.

Read the Russian version of this post here.

BBC Radio 4 opens Vassily Grossman's season today (19:45 GMT) with a reading of one of his Stalingrad reports 'Through Chekhov's Eyes'.

Chekhov here is a Russian sniper who killed 256 nazi soldiers and officers at Stalingrad. Grossman, who later wrote the great war novel Life and Fate, was a correspondent for the Red Star, the army newspaper. He spent months in Stalingrad. The Chekhov article is based on Grossman's first-hand observations when sitting together with the famous sniper in his hideout. In 1942 Chekhov was 19. 

Chekhov survived Stalingrad, but was seriously wounded in 1944 – he lost a foot.  After the war he quarelled with authorities over his living conditions, he didn't even have a room of his own, not to speak of a flat or a house. In 1965, when the 20th anniversary of the Victory was widely celebrated in Russia, Chekhov was 'rediscovered' by another famous war writer Sergei Smirnov and became a hero again.

Konstantin Simonov, the writer famous for his war trilogy The Living and the Dead, wrote once that he couldn't understand the sniper psychology. To kill a man in a general combat, yes, but to hunt down a human, keep him in sights and shoot down, sometimes seeing the face, no, he couldn't comprehend that. In the first Soviet novel about Stalingrad, Days and Nights, which came out while the war was still on, Simonov doesn't say a word about the Stalingrad snipers.

To Grossman they were heroes.

Here is an excerpt from the Radio 4 introduction to the three-episode reading:

 'I wanted to become the sort of man who destroys the enemy with his own hands' [said Chekhov]. The cult of the sniper emerged spontaneously during the Stalingrad conflict. The 'Stalingrad Academy of street fighting' became a new kind of war where every floor, every building, every block became its own front line. Here a sniper could extract a terrible and personal vengeance upon the German invaders who had forced the Soviets to the very banks of the river Volga. Encouraged by their commanders, lionized by journalists like Grossman, the sniper became a heroic symbol of steely determination. Here Grossman delivers a portrait both intimate and heroic of a young man transformed by war amidst the ruined city.

The story is read by Elliot Levey, translation is by Jim Riordan.

Radio 4 is to broadcast in September a play based on Grossman's great epic Life and Fate with Kenneth Branagh in the leading role. The novel was banned in the Soviet Union, smuggled out to the West and published in 1985 in Robert Chandler's translation.

Grossman's article and a biography of Anatoly Chekhov (in Russian) is here. The BBC programme web page is here and here. Tetradki posts about Life and Fate are here and here. 


The 2001 film Enemy at the Gates with Jude Law and Ed Harris is based on the story of the duel between a German ace sniper and a top Russian sniper Vassili Zaitsev. Here is a video:

First Russian Collected Works of Platonov

A Russian monument to Platonov

Update: Vremya editor Tatiana Timakova contacted me to say that the final eighth volume of the edition had just come out and is available from Wednesday this week. Great news and congratulations for this fine accomplishment. More information on their website here.

The Russian publishing house Vremya ("Время") says on its Facebook page that it is close to finishing the eight volume has finished publishing the collected works of Andrei Platonov, the first such full collection of works by the writer who is considered by many to be one of the greatest figures of Russian literature. Seven volumes have already been published.  There are eight volumes in the collection.

Platonov came out of the brilliant crop of post-revolution writers of 1920s. He has a unique voice that employs Soviet newspeak, professional engineering jargon and folk motives to construct inimitable images and situations.

He survived the purges, virulent official criticism and front line service during the second world war – to succumb to tuberculosis he caught from his son who got it while in the gulag.

Platonov's 8 volume cover

Platonov was always known for his short stories, but since perestroika he has made a slow but steady return to Russian and international readers also as the author of major novels.

Brodsky referred to him as one of the all time greats. Robert Chandler, who translated Chevengur  and The Foundation Pit (Kotlovan) said, after finishing work on an anthology of Russian short stories, that  'there were only two writers whom I was still able to read with real wonder: Pushkin and Platonov. Even at this late stage I was still able to find new and surprising perceptions in Pushkin's The Queen of Spades and Platonov's The Return. This didn't happen with any other writers'. (Read Languagehat blogs on Chevengur and Kotlovan here.)

Vremya's Facebook says they 'speak' Russian, English and Spanish and they have a blog here.

And this is the song scene from Maria's Lovers, the 1984 American film with Nastassia Kinsky based on Platonov's story 'The River Potudan' ("Река Потудань"). Andrei Konchalovsky had dreamt about making it since he was working on 'Andrei Rublev' with Tarkovsky in the 60s.  (Maria's Lovers DVD on Amazon here)



Photo by Shalin, from here.
Platonov's cover image by permission of Vremya Publishers.

Grossman's Life and Fate to be serialised by the BBC

Vasily Grossman
as war correspondent in Germany in 1945

 (version in Russian is here) read the Tetradki review of the radio play here and download the 13 episodes of Life and Fate from the BBC web-site here. Read all Tetradki posts on Grossman here.
 

BBC Radio 4 controller Gwyneth Williams has confirmed that an epic eight-hour dramatisation of Vassily Grossman’s novel ‘Life and Fate’ will be produced and is to be broadcast in September this year. In Radio 4 ‘Feedback’ programme Williams called the project ‘agenda setting’. She also said that ‘what is relevant is important, even if it is history’ and happens in far away places. Williams pointed to the huge interest provoked by the recent radio series ‘I, Cladius’ as another example of such indirect relevance.

What transpires from the programme, which ostensibly provides the platform for the BBC producers and editors to defend their decisions and answer criticism from listeners, but often throws light on the inner workings of the corporation, is that there must have been some opposition to the production of ‘Life and Fate’ against the background of swingeing cuts at the BBC. Just a few days ago BBC announced  that 25 percent of its World Service staff is to be cut. Russian and Ukranian services, among others, will no longer broadcast through traditional radio, but only via the internet.

So, keeping the project that is to take over practically all drama slots on Radio 4 for a week must be seen as something of significant importance. That significance is not measured by the importance of Russia in modern world, but by Grossman’s exploration of the nature of totalitarianism, in broad sense – of the relationship of the people and the state. His novel is set during the second world war and describes the Battle of Stalingrad, life and death in nazi concentration camps and the Soviet repressive machine. 

The book is often said to be ‘the War and Peace’ of the 20th Century (link to a review in Russian). Grossman wrote it in 1950s, first thinking of it as a sequel to the novel Stalingrad (later retitled as For a Just Cause), but soon realising that it is a novel in its own right. Soon after Grossman submitted the novel for publication KGB raided his flat, confiscated all copies and the communist party ideology boss Suslov, who hadn’t read the book, told him that it would not be published in the Soviet Union for another 200-300 years. A copy was smuggled to the West in 1970s and published in 1980 in Switzerland. In 1988 it was published in the Soviet Union. The English translation was made by Robert Chandler, according to whom the novel slowly gains recognition in the West with annual sales going from a few hundred a year initially up to four-five thousand copies in recent years. The BBC series will put the novel into a wider public circulation.

This is what Chandler says about the novel (from an article in Prospect, note: paid site, only part of the article available):

It is easy for a translator to exaggerate the importance of what he is working on. In the early 1980s, while I was translating Life and Fate, I was certain that it was a very great work. As the years passed and few people either in Russia or the west seemed to be paying much attention to it, I began to doubt my judgement. It was a joy, therefore, to reread the novel last winter, for the first time in 20 years, and realise that I had underestimated Grossman’s greatness. Life and Fate is not only a brave and wise book; it is also written with Chekhovian subtlety.

Collins Harvill published my translation of Life and Fate in 1985. The reviews were mostly positive but sales were disappointing, especially in view of the fact that the book had been a bestseller in France; one of Grossman’s central themes – the identity of fascism and communism – was clearly a more pressing concern in a country where communism was still a significant political force. And there were English critics who thought Grossman dull. Anthony Burgess, for example, seemed irritated by George Steiner’s judgement that ‘novels like Solzhenitsyn’s Red Wheel and Life and Fate eclipse almost all that passes for serious fiction in the west today.’ Burgess accused Grossman of lack of imagination – a surprising thing to say of a writer able to describe so convincingly the last moments of a child dying in a Nazi gas chamber.

The BBC Radio 4 press-release about the forthcoming series:

This autumn BBC Radio 4 presents the much-anticipated eight-hour dramatisation of Life And Fate by Vasily Grossman.

For the first time on Radio 4, a single title will take over every drama slot (apart from The Archers) across a week in September, reflecting the epic span of this 20th-century Russian masterpiece.

Set against the background of the Battle of Stalingrad, the turning-point in the defeat of the Nazis in the Second World War, Life And Fate follows the stories of an extended family separated by the German invasion. Flung to the four corners of the Soviet Union and beyond, they experience hardships, grief and the value of human kindness.

Recording mainly in 2011, the extensive cast includes Samuel West, Sara Kestelman, John Sessions, Kenneth Cranham and Matthew Marsh. The producer/director is Alison Hindell for the BBC.

Life and Death is online in Russian here.

The Captain's Daughter, Robert Chandler's Essay on Pushkin

I have long thought that Alexander Pushkin's short novel 'The Captain's Daughter'  is the best in Russian literature. At least in the sense that it has, in concise form, everything that Russian writing is great for: passion, depth, characters, historical scale, structure and, of course, the language.

Somehow I have taken for granted the beauty of Pushkin's prose. This is why I was surprised - and delighted - to read Robert Chandler's essay on translating 'The Captain's Daughter'. (Languagehat published a post about him and discussion continues there). Chandler looks at the poetic devices used in Pushkin's prose. This is what he says on Pushkin's soundwork:

 

Some of Pushkin’s effects of alliteration extend only the length of a single sentence. These leave a translator with little room to manoeuvre. Our original version of the first sentence of chapter nine, Pyotr’s account of the morning immediately after the fall of Belogorsk, was as follows: ‘Early in the morning I was woken by the sound of a drum.’ The Russian, however, is an unobtrusive but perfect example of onomatopoeia: 'Rano utrom razbudil menya baraban.’ We tried, naturally, to reproduce this effect, but we found there was little we could do. Our final version, ‘Around dawn I was woken by the sound of a drum’, has the merit of concision and contains some play on the sounds ‘D’, ‘N’ and ‘R’; nevertheless, it falls far short of the original.

Other examples of Pushkin’s sound play are more extended. Pyotr’s French tutor, Beaupré, carries with him his own sound world, centred on two of the consonants from his own name. Pushkin’s first description of him begins as follows: Beaupré v otechestve svoem byl parikmakherom, potom v Prussii soldatom, potom priekhal v Rossiyu pour être outchitel. This aura of ‘PR’ proved oddly easy to reproduce; for the main part, in fact, we reproduced it unwittingly, before I had even consciously noticed it in the original. Only after coming up with the word ‘pronouncing’ for a sentence about Beaupré’s love of vodka cordials – ‘even came to prefer them to the wines of his fatherland, pronouncing them incomparably better for the digestion’ – did I realize that at least part of the word's appropriateness came from the way it harmonized with such words as ‘Prussia’, ‘prefer’, ‘prod’, and above all with Savelich’s scornful repetition of Beaupré’s repeated requests to the housekeeper for vodka: ‘Madam, zhe vu pri, vodkoo’.

Here, I am not quite sure why vodka in the comical phrase 'мадам, же ву при, водкю' is rendered into English as 'vodkoo' which is the phonetic straightforward of Accusative (водку)? Does vodkyu or vodqueue not sound right in English?

Another thing that bothers me is the English title. Tranlsate The Captain's Daughter back into Russian and you get Капитанская дочь. Which is correct, but loses an important key in Pushkin's narrative - familiarity. Grinev's strength is in his family, Mironov, the commandant of the fortress treats him as one of his own family, Pugachev is on familiar terms with his 'court' - and with Grinev, and Masha talks to the Empress in a familiar, infromal situation. Is there no other way to express this in English? Arthur Ransome uses 'little' abundantly to convey Russian suffixes, but, I am told, if it were used in this case it would sound as if it meant a little girl of ten.